


Burrowing Underneath Rock and Soil

by MaskofCognito



Series: Burrowing Underneath Rock and Soil [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternative Nano Challenge, Discovered, Gen, Hiding, Isolation, Loneliness, M/M, One Shot, Post-War, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 02:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21402319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaskofCognito/pseuds/MaskofCognito
Summary: Draco has been living a life of solitude since the war, trying his best to stay out of the line of sight. He's been very careful, but somehow he slips. And, of course, Potter is there to find him out.This fic can be read as gen or pre-slash.This short is a prequel toTunneling Above the Ground, but can be read as a stand alone..
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Burrowing Underneath Rock and Soil [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547080
Kudos: 24





	Burrowing Underneath Rock and Soil

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Underworld  
Song Inspiration: [Just the Two of Us](https://youtu.be/FAltaDOEcnU) by Michael Marc  
I imagine this is the music playing in the bistro.

Draco scratches his head in irritation, a recent habit he's formed. "Fuck this!" He stands abruptly and throws his quill in the direction he was working. Ink splatters across the parchment, blending with some of the notes and making them illegible. The pen bounces on the table and rolls off the side, creating a mess on the floor. 

Instead of cleaning everything up, Draco raises his hands next to his head and he growls in frustration, "Raaaaagggggghhhhhhhhh!" He's done. This isn't working. He needs a distraction and a fucking break. 

Draco is trying to create a spell that can turn any item into a source of energy for spells, wards, and charms. In theory, this spell should allow Draco to weave the wards to draw its power from a log rather than his magic. And when the log eats away and becomes nothing, he can reassign the power source to anything else of magical or non-magical properties.

But he just can't. Not right now. Draco's head is full of fury and rage at his latest failed attempts. The math isn't lining up correctly and the runes are all wrong. He grabs his bag and takes a potion from the shelf. 

Polyjuice potion tastes like rotten Hippogriff flesh and moldy carrots, but once Draco had downed it enough times, he started to get past the initial gag; though— let’s be honest— it will never be remotely palatable. He has an entire bookshelf lined with premade polyjuice potions, all producing different identities. Draco watches his reflection in the mirror as his skin bubbles and morphs, painfully transitioning into a softened female form. 

When the transformation is complete, Draco stretches out his jaw and pops his neck. Then, he disapperates. 

There is a nearby bistro that Draco has taken a fancy to. The music is nice, the customers are sensible, and it’s never overly crowded when he visits. He shuffles through his bag, checking his muggle money reserves. He will need to sell some poultices or come up with another idea of what he can sell to muggles in exchange for their currency sometime soon. 

Draco orders English breakfast tea with milk and sits at a bar top he usually snags. Opening his bag, he pulls out a leatherbound journal and a fountain pen. He flips half way through, finding the first empty page, and dates it. His journal is a recording of his time escaping the Ministry of Magic. 

Right after the war had ended, he ran. Aurors were hunting him down to make him sit trial for his war crimes. Draco was certain it wouldn’t end well, and considering he hadn’t done anything outright terrible, and he regretted everything he _had_ done, well… he ran. Fight or flight. Draco chose flight. 

But, bloody hell, those Aurors were persistent little buggers.

Draco ran from one country to the next— one continent to the next— and no matter where he ended up or how far away he was from Britain, they were always on his tail. He tried everything he could think of. Glamours didn’t seem to work, and his animagus work kept backfiring dangerously— definitely not his strong suit, not like potions. He managed to scathe by using polyjuice potions, perhaps because they were such a simple and short lived remedy. 

Finally, after all his running, he’d found a place the Aurors seemed unable to follow— or at least unaware as a possibility. Draco thought about where the Aurors would least likely look and the only solution that came to mind was wherever Potter stayed. 

So, deep under Grimmauld Place, Draco used his magic to carve out a home. Only a few rooms: sleeping chambers, kitchen and dining, and a study. No foyer, no entrance beyond apparition. 

When he’d first began, Draco had apparated across the street from Potter’s residence. He’d started with a gouging spell and glamoured the area to be under muggle construction. It took a while to get deep enough and to work only as often as to not raise suspicion, but after half a year of work, he was deep underground and had enough room carved out that he could fill the hole that lead from the street to his new bedroom. Without knowing where the hollow areas were, no one could apparate into Draco’s new home without potentially burying themselves alive. 

But damn if it’s not a miserable lifestyle. So very lonely. 

Crab, Goyle, and Pansy were all kept under strict surveillance from the Ministry. Draco hadn’t yet found a communication method— short of bumping into them in the open— that couldn’t be traced. And even that posed its challenges as he always had to be under some kind of guise. 

The skin on Draco’s arm ripples. His eyes shoot to the area quickly and he checks the time. “Shit.”

He shoves his journal and pen into his bag and gets up to leave. His skin starts to itch and he can feel his body start to grow taller again. Shoving his bag’s strap over his head, he dashes out of the bistro and turns the corner into an alleyway. He’s about to dissaperate when he feels an arm on his. 

“Miss! You dropped your— “ Harry fucking Potter is handing him his fountain pen. It must have fallen out of his bag, not properly put away is his haste. 

Draco knows his face is morphing back and he is sporting a look of panic. He quickly grabs the pen, pulls his arm free of Potter’s grasp, and puts his voice in a high falsetto blurting out, “Thank you!”

He runs past the corner of the building and into the next alleyway before disapparating back to his subsurface safety. Draco drops his bag on the desk and leans against the wall. His knees give in and he slides down, his heart racing and panic blaring in his ears. His skin burns, and he wails loudly as his body finishes its transformation back into his original form. 

Draco forces himself to even his breathing. He forces himself to calm down until the loud ringing in his ears finally subsides. But the security he is so certain he’d just found is quickly shattered when out of nowhere Harry Potter appears before him.

“Fuuuck!” Draco yells and slams his head back against the wall in exasperation and defeat. He’s done. All his work in fleeing and hiding has come to naught. Exhaustion is all Draco has left, and he shuts his eyes, willing his entire world to black.

**Author's Note:**

> **TIME-STAMP.** I promised a time-stamp on November 16th and I am delivering. If you want to read the sequel to this One Shot, you can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21461248).
> 
> I didn't want to write for Nano and commit to 50k when I know that a) I'm not great at long story commitments, and b) my life is a bit busy. However, I didn't want to NOT write this month. So, I decided to commit to a prompt a day for the month of November of whichever fandom I enjoy which gives the prompt the most spark. I'm using [this](https://n7month.tumblr.com/post/188450175349/n7-month-challenge) prompt list I found from tumblr, in case anyone wants to reference it or join in.


End file.
